The Dalai Lama once said that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. Many historical examples validate this statement.
Winning a huge lottery payout has ruined more than one life. Gaining fame and celebrity – be it in entertainment, sports, or politics – has led to crushing downfalls. Seeking and getting revenge for a personal hurt rarely leads to anything constructive or healthy. This past May Emily Winter described online how she was offered her “dream job,” only to find that taking it turned out to be a disastrous decision.
Another adage conveys a form of the Dalai Lama’s wisdom: “Be careful what you wish for because you might get it.” One of the biblical writers put it this way: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.”
The critical factor here is wanting, wishing and perhaps acquiring, things that lead to wholeness, well-being, and personal fulfillment as opposed to those that produce negativity and misery. Money, fame, fortune, power and all the assumed pleasures that they enable more often than not result in the opposite of the joy and sense of self-worth that all human beings seek.
A long treatise could be written on the things of deep and lasting value that engender physical, mental, and emotional health. Things such as caring for others, for the whole community along with one’s natural self-interest. Things like a lifestyle leading to physical health as opposed to treating one’s body like a garbage dump.
We all make decisions, conscious or sub-conscious, about what we think will be good for us. It pays to double-check what we think.
Comments